Done for the day

He’s done for the day, but Llewellyn Jones very kindly agrees to perform one more number so that I can take his picture this evening on Hosier Lane in Melbourne.

“I’ll do a cover of a cover,” he says into his microphone to his audience of one. With that he begins to play Jack Johnson’s version of the classic 70’s song “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”, by singer Rupert Holmes. It’s a chilled out song, perfect for a relaxed evening amid the chaotic colors of this famous and ever-changing city laneway.

Originally from Sydney, Adam performs under his middle and last names after his Welsh grandfather. He’s been busking for about a year or so, and just renewed his Melbourne city busking permit for another twelve months. “I made that money back within a couple of hours,” he tells me as he puts the money he’s collected in his guitar case into a glass jar with a screw top lid.

“I kind of like coming down here because its like a nice surprise for people I think. I feel like when people are here they’re walking along looking at the art and stuff so they’re maybe a little more accepting of me,” he says as people slowly walk by, their cameras and phones in their hands snapping shots of the spayed walls.

Sitting amidst the graffiti, tags, stencils, and scrawls, Adam is often the focus of a photograph. I offer to send him the picture I take, but then comment that he must be inundated with similar offers from the hundreds of people who must have taken his picture.

“You’d be surprised, I get like hardly anyone offer to do that,” he tells me. “Sometimes its like people must take hundreds of photos of me everyday, like really close too, then nothing, not a penny, not even a thank you.”

I joke that if he had a dollar for every picture someone took he might make more money. The thing is that’s probably true.

“I bight my tongue every day man,” he says. “I’ve come this close to making a sign that says ‘donation for a photo’ but that’s not what I want to be, you know?”

A keen snowboarder, Adam can be found working the chairlifts in the winter months at Thredbo, a ski resort town in the mountains of New South Wales.

“No matter whatever, you’ll always find me there in June, July, August and September,” he says. “I make decent money there for four months, then I spend a time doing whatever I want.”

He’ll be playing Hosier Lane for a little while longer for sure, but winter is just around the corner, and so pretty soon Adam will be swapping his guitar for his snowboard which sounds like a pretty good life to me.

I am glad you’re enjoying the emails Anthony. You might have missed the link to a YouTube video of him playing. It’s under what I wrote. I should say I didn’t film that video. In my case his rendition of ‘Escape’ sounded just like that of Jack Johnson’s.